Why did the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fire us?

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is being gutted from the inside out. Created in 2010 after the Great Recession, during which the typical American household lost one-third of its wealth, the bureau was established to put the financial well-being of families ahead of the interests of lobbyists and Wall Street.

On Wednesday, the bureau’s new leadership effectively fired its Consumer Advisory Board, a volunteer body mandated by law that is supposed to advise the bureau, without ever having held a substantive meeting with its members. This sudden move and other recent changes at the bureau, including efforts to loosen rules intended to protect families and businesses, raise the worrisome prospect that the country will once again end up on a path to foreclosed homes, market failures and taxpayer bailouts.